The LA Times's recent failed experiment in encouraging consumers to use a Wiki to add their input is an interesting one. The problem was that profanity got the better of the Wiki. However, the newspaper acknowledges that consumers added a lot of good content in addition to the profanity.
So before media run to the hills and pull the plug on consumer created journalism, they should first consider the platform. Wikis rely on policing and monitoring by their members, but when a corporate third party is behind the Wiki there is probably lots of incentive to abuse and no way to police it.
Media companies need to give consumers the opportunity to contribute, but they need to do this with more robust tools that allow policing, it simply doesn't make sense to keep it so open.
One of the most successful open-source/consumer created newspapers is Korea's Oh My News. This newspaper has 33,000 citizen reports and 10 full-time editors.
Consumer-created media content is not going away. In August, Current TV will launch a cable network that's dedicated to broadcasting and producing consumer-created content.
